I can survive.
“Let me come with you!” Lily screams, fighting to get free of Katherine. She ain’t too little to know what comes next. She’s grown up in this world of misery and loss just like the rest of us. She knows that Jackson ain’t coming back, and that there ain’t no way to survive a shambler bite.
But Jackson shakes his head. “No, Lily-bird. This ain’t for you to see.” He walks over and embraces her for a short moment before kissing her on the forehead. He kneels and whispers something in her ear, and she’s crying too hard for me to hear what he tells her.
I want to cry, too. I want to sob bitter tears of grief and disappointment and rage. But I don’t, because I ain’t got time. There are more dead headed right for us, and if we don’t get moving, Jackson won’t be the only one we lose today.
Lily sobs brokenly, and I hand Katherine the rifle as she pulls the younger girl away, toward the wagon and our escape. Jackson and I don’t move, just watch them leave.
“You got the chills yet?” I ask. Everyone knows how the change works. First, the numbness, then the chills, making a body shake so hard that anyone nearby would think they’re having a fit. And then, right before it happens, a yellowing of the eyes and drooling, like they got the scent of frying pork chops stuck in their nostrils. I’ve seen it happen, heard people scream and snap through the change as it overtook them.
But it’s never been someone close to my heart. Jackson is the first. He’s been a handful of firsts for me; this one is by far the worst.
“No chills, but I can’t feel the bite anymore. We need to move,” he says, setting off back the way he came. His long legs eat up the distance, tracking through the knee-high grass, and I damn near trip over the shambler remains lying in the weeds.
“At least you gave them what for,” I say, pulling out my sickles. It’s cold comfort, but I ain’t sure what else to say.
I walk behind Jackson, watching the way his shirt plays across his back, thinking to yesterday when I did the same thing. How dreadful the memory is, how unfair. It’s a doorway to all sorts of better memories and worse ones besides. I have to fight to lock them down. It’s too seductive to wish for simpler times, to get lost in the softness of nostalgia.
“They were fast, too fast, which means there’s most likely more of them out there.” Jackson stops. We’re far enough away from the homestead that all that’s visible is the rough outline of the house. He starts to shake, and tears leak from the corners of his eyes. “Do it now, Jane. Don’t make me go through the change.”
I shake my head. “I can’t. Not until I know it’s real.” I won’t risk killing him if by some bit of luck I don’t have to, and his shoulders slump with the realization of it. For some reason, I think of Gideon’s vaccine—his confidence that he’d found a way to render a shambler bite harmless. But here I am, watching my best boy turn, helpless to do anything but witness his end.
Hope is deadly, and some part of me wants to believe that all those lies about Negroes being immune to the bite are true. But my eyes tell me otherwise.
Jackson is turning, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
The sky is brightening by degrees, the sun painting colors into the rough landscape. Now I can see the fear naked on Jackson’s face, the realization that there’s no way out of this.
“You know it’s real. I wouldn’t lie about something like this,” he says.
Tears break free, and I laugh and wipe them away. “You can’t blame me, though. You never were any good with the truth.” I need him to joke with me, to be as dismissive as he was when we ran together. Even last night, as he tore out my heart and stomped it to smithereens, he still wore that cursed half smile of his, as though it was just another bit of meaningless conversation. Earnestness ain’t something I can tolerate right now.
I am barely holding myself together.
But Jackson ignores the unspoken plea in my voice. And who am I to dictate the tone of his last moments?
He falls to his knees, wrapping his arms around himself. He shakes, and behind him the sun is rising in a bloody sort of way. It makes me wish I was some kind of artist, that I could render the beauty of Jackson and the sky in oil paints, shades of red and love. I want to stop time, to freeze this moment forever.
“It’s funny, I ain’t got a lot of regrets, Janey-Jane,” he says, the old nickname cutting through me like a dull, rusty blade, lodging right in the softest spot of me. “I’ve always lived my life knowing just what kind of man I was. But I’m sorry things didn’t work between us. I’m sorry I wasn’t the man you needed.”
“It ain’t supposed to end like this,” I say, and look away.
“Jane.” He waits for me to look back, and that’s when he stills for a moment. In the growing sunlight he is a vision. The red in his curls glints like fire, and his eyes are as green as spring leaves. He’s a creature out of myth and lore, a satyr dancing and luring innocent maidens into his wood. Jackson ain’t looking at me so much as looking through me, like he sees a world much better than the one we live in. A slight smile parts his full lips. He is everything I have ever wanted. “You know that ain’t true. It was always gonna end like this.”
I take a shaky breath, but halfway it lodges on a sob. This time, I let the tears fall.
“No one gets out of here alive,” he continues, and for half a heartbeat my penny goes icy before warming back up. “Like my daddy used to say: it begins bloody, and it ends the same way.”
It ain’t the kind of thing I’m expecting, and I have to fight to swallow around the lump in my throat. It’s all so damn unfair. “Damn you, Jackson. Damn you for this.”
“I know, Jane. I know.” A shudder passes through him, and he stills. He closes his eyes. “I love you, Jane. I know what I said before, but I’m asking you now: keep Lily safe for me.”
“How am I supposed to do that in this godforsaken world—” I start to ask, but there ain’t going to be no answer forthcoming.
Jackson’s shoulders slump and he falls forward. The sun is up now, and the world has gone bright.
And I can see lurching, stumbling forms in the distance.
I know I need to get our band of survivors back on the road to Nicodemus, but I can’t leave. If there’s one thing Jackson could always be counted on for, it’s getting himself out of one situation after another. Part of me is hoping this will be one more story he’ll be telling out the side of his mouth with half a smile, the danger long past.
But then the form on the ground lets out a growl, a shambler’s moan, and I know Jackson is gone.
So I raise my sickles, and do what I must. Swiftly.
And as Jackson’s head separates from his body, I fall to my knees, sobs wracking my body.
I will never let myself love someone again.
I’m still sobbing as I drag myself to my feet. I want to run out to the middle of the prairie and just lie down, see if I can pull myself together, or if my parts just disintegrate and float away on the wind. But time ain’t a luxury I have.
I also can’t leave behind the valuables on the body. If anything, Jackson wouldn’t want me to. I clean off my sickles before I grab his hat and tip it upside down like a basket. Into it goes his pistol and the big knife in his belt. His pockets yield a gold watch on a chain and not much more. I’m just about to leave when I decide to pull off his boots and find a letter inside the left one. It’s written in a messy hand, and I only have to glance at the first few lines to realize that it must be from his wife.